January is hard

Look! I’m back to the several-posts a day phase!
My main thought today is: January is hard. It is a hard fricken month. It is very dark. And Cold. And stupid stores come out with their Resort lines making us all feel like we need to be in some tropical place with significantly less poundage and more tan. Which, is not very smart right after all the candy and booze of the holidays and all the extra blankets we were given and the fact that its DARK and COLD outside. So, no wonder I am grumpy.

A few more things I thought of today:

My hair- I decided last night that I feel prettier with my hair longer. However, today I think it is rather nice. Perhaps it is a division – I think I look prettier with longer hair when I am wearing my glasses, but shorter without them. It doesn’t really matter, as I will grow it out and decide which length is best. Perhaps I just needed to shower to feel prettier.

Whether I am an abstainer or not – This whole concept is derived from something I read on the Happiness Project blog, and has to do with whether you are more successful with things like diet or habits if you go all or nothing, or whether you are better with small rules. As in – I can allow myself one beer a night but no more and I am successful with moderate drinking, vs. even one beer a night throws me a loop and I can’t stop (ok maybe beer is a bad example since it has the hint of alcoholics), so… exercise. An abstainer is best if she says “I will exercise one hour every day” and sticks to it, as opposed to someone who is not who says “I will exercise seven hours a week” and does more or less seven hours at random times that fit into her schedule. Both get the same amount of exercise in, but it is the “every day” aspect that changes the level of ability to commit. I feel like I am not an abstainer with exercise, as I really do it best when I say “I will get 25 miles in this week and one yoga set and one strength set” and do it when I can work it in based on energy levels, as opposed to the always failing “I will run every morning” routine. Yet, when it comes to food, it is much easier for me to say “I don’t eat this at all” than to say “sometimes”. I got thinking about this because of the roommate’s de-carbing experiment that I may introduce for a few weeks to see how I feel. This whole two months countdown until bathing suit season thing is freaking me out.

My food – see above. Also, this morning I made my favorite smoothie (fruit juice, banana, flax seeds, spinach, peanut butter- seriously it tastes like peanut butter) but did not have enough fruit juice or fruit in it so I could smell and chew the spinach and that is a deal breaker – couldn’t eat it! It was a shame. So I brought some oatmeal in to work and a giant salad that ended up being too big for the bowl so I split it in half and will have the other half for lunch tomorrow. Also, the soup I made last night was fantastic.

Running – the experiment to run home from work last week worked pretty well, except I wasn’t entirely comfortable running in the dark through some of the neighborhoods. I originally thought I could run home down 16th street, which is a business district all the way through, and avoid all of that, but when I went to plan my route I couldn’t find it. Well, I thought about it some more and I actually can do that. So I am trying that way today and am planning on running in to work tomorrow the same way (if I had forethought I would have brought some more clothes, but it seems as if I will wear the same thing to work tomorrow that I am wearing today. Whatevs. Nobody will notice that’s for sure.).

The humidity in my room – This is, honestly, the first thing I think of when I wake up. Because my room is freezing when I go to bed, but by the time I wake up the radiator has been on for a while and it is DRY as a dessert and HOT AS BALLS to the point where I am sleeping poorly because I wake up to throw off my many blankets and sweat everything out and have such dry skin it’s gross. So I think I’ll start keeping a bucket of water in the room and see if that helps anything.

The car- I should be picking it up tomorrow. I figured out that if I get it detailed and the oil changed this weekend, I can park it and take off the tags and cancel my insurance next week and that will save me a few hundred dollars right there. I also think that I may be able to get away with paying the balance of my loan right away when I find someone who wants to buy the freakin car instead of taking out a personal loan for the $1500 or so that will be remaining because either I can borrow some money from the bro (I hope) or I can make it happen around when I get a paycheck and just, kind of give them all I have because I’ll save it back the next month. I am really excited. I think I’ll be able to retire this debt by March, pay for France with the money I save the next month, and then start putting a whole lot of cash in the bank. To save.

Which brings me to the concepts that today starts a bunch of more-or-less temporary principles (definitely more temporary, for like, two months):
- I WILL NOT spend money on booze
- I WILL limit my carb intake to one meal a day (I’m already doing this, but if I make it a principle I am more likely to think about it and do it right)
- I WILL run four days a week and get a yoga and a strength session in.
- I WILL try to have more GREEN in my room (I do LOVE plants)
- I WILL NOT worry about my future (I don’t anyway, but this way I’ll be less preoccupied)
- I WILL NOT compare my life to my friends’ who are a) overseas b) engaged c) have awesome jobs.

Ta-Da!
QED.